Coach.carpenter
Member
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2016
- Messages
- 28
Good evening all,
I have introduced myself here before but for those of you who may not have seen then here it is. My name is Greg and i'm a cabinet maker / finishing carpenter who's been in business around 18 months now. In the beginning the plan was to be mainly workshop based and invest all my (little) money into getting myself a full workshop, however over the last 18 months i've discovered that it's very difficult to start from nothing and have a) enough work to warrant a full workshop and b) savings to afford high end workshop machinery. As a consequence i have ended more site based (residential and shop fitting)
To be honest I enjoy it, a lot. I miss being in the workshop but I find it very difficult to keep motivation all the time and find myself procrastinating making projects that don't earn me any money.
Seeing as though almost all of my money has now gone onto investing in mobile and portable equipment. The one thing I have missed more than anything else is a decent solid workbench to work from. I've tried trestles but its not even close, workmates are equally no good. So I decided that I would borrow an MFT/3 from a friend for a week to see how I got on with it and in all honesty, I liked it, but I couldn't get on with it as I needed more out of my workbench. The things that didn't work for me are as follows:
1) I use my workbench as a sort of centre of setup type of area. This means that I spend most of my time working from it, be it cutting / routing / sanding or simply planning and organising my setup. The MFT for me fell down here as its a great bench but i want more storage options, and more adaptability.
2) Working mainly finish carpentry I fit a lot of doors. A lot and I like to have a setup where I can do everything in one spot. Cut, install hardware and plane to then be taken away to hang. The MFT is perfect for cutting the doors but where it falls down for me is there is no where to securely hold the door on its end for the routing of hinges etc.
3) Hand planing puts an awful lot of lateral force on the workbench and I don't like a bench that has movement in it when i'm planing.
So there's my brief now it's time to put my experiences into practice and design something that suits my needs! Here is what I came up with.
It's a birch ply workbench, with a shelf, with side mounts for doors, with tool tote for to keep my bench dogs and other small tools off the worktop, an MDF top with 96 centred 20mm dog holes. Most importantly it fold to less that 90mm thick. it takes 20 seconds to put up and slides into my van when not in use. Most importantly this thing is strong, and i mean strong! There is no lateral movement what so ever. I've been using both the mk1 prototype and mk2 prototype for nearly 6 months now and I really don't know how i lived without it. For me, its everything I need.
I've already thought of a million accessories to go with it, and I plan on developing this further. I have started the process to putting it on the market as i truly believe that its a good idea. What do you think? would you have one? What would you do differently? I will record a short video of me putting it up and performing some basic operations if anyone is interested?
I have introduced myself here before but for those of you who may not have seen then here it is. My name is Greg and i'm a cabinet maker / finishing carpenter who's been in business around 18 months now. In the beginning the plan was to be mainly workshop based and invest all my (little) money into getting myself a full workshop, however over the last 18 months i've discovered that it's very difficult to start from nothing and have a) enough work to warrant a full workshop and b) savings to afford high end workshop machinery. As a consequence i have ended more site based (residential and shop fitting)
To be honest I enjoy it, a lot. I miss being in the workshop but I find it very difficult to keep motivation all the time and find myself procrastinating making projects that don't earn me any money.
Seeing as though almost all of my money has now gone onto investing in mobile and portable equipment. The one thing I have missed more than anything else is a decent solid workbench to work from. I've tried trestles but its not even close, workmates are equally no good. So I decided that I would borrow an MFT/3 from a friend for a week to see how I got on with it and in all honesty, I liked it, but I couldn't get on with it as I needed more out of my workbench. The things that didn't work for me are as follows:
1) I use my workbench as a sort of centre of setup type of area. This means that I spend most of my time working from it, be it cutting / routing / sanding or simply planning and organising my setup. The MFT for me fell down here as its a great bench but i want more storage options, and more adaptability.
2) Working mainly finish carpentry I fit a lot of doors. A lot and I like to have a setup where I can do everything in one spot. Cut, install hardware and plane to then be taken away to hang. The MFT is perfect for cutting the doors but where it falls down for me is there is no where to securely hold the door on its end for the routing of hinges etc.
3) Hand planing puts an awful lot of lateral force on the workbench and I don't like a bench that has movement in it when i'm planing.
So there's my brief now it's time to put my experiences into practice and design something that suits my needs! Here is what I came up with.
It's a birch ply workbench, with a shelf, with side mounts for doors, with tool tote for to keep my bench dogs and other small tools off the worktop, an MDF top with 96 centred 20mm dog holes. Most importantly it fold to less that 90mm thick. it takes 20 seconds to put up and slides into my van when not in use. Most importantly this thing is strong, and i mean strong! There is no lateral movement what so ever. I've been using both the mk1 prototype and mk2 prototype for nearly 6 months now and I really don't know how i lived without it. For me, its everything I need.
I've already thought of a million accessories to go with it, and I plan on developing this further. I have started the process to putting it on the market as i truly believe that its a good idea. What do you think? would you have one? What would you do differently? I will record a short video of me putting it up and performing some basic operations if anyone is interested?
